


So This is the Lie

by Astereae



Series: Alderean stories [2]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, Angst, Coming Out, Does that make sense?, Established Relationship, Fluff, I did it u fuckers, I wrote it, I’d Why I wrote this I wassss gonna leave it up to interpretation so this is, I’m not sur y’all are ready for the brilliance that is Maija, M/M, POV First Person, PTSD, Reunion, basically a fanfic of my fanfic, blue lighting and the red bandit, but it’s from Maija’s pov So it’s chill ig, have fun, lol anyway enjoy, they home
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-13
Updated: 2018-05-13
Packaged: 2019-05-06 02:47:08
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,277
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14632485
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Astereae/pseuds/Astereae
Summary: Lance came home, with a boyfriend, said boyfriend’s sister, a haircut, a piercing, fifty pounds in muscle, three inches, scars, psychological issues that may never be solved and a lie.Maija wanted him home, but now that she has him it’s more like she just wants to be able to spend a minute without her brother and his ridiculously lovey relationship with his boyfriend in her face.





	So This is the Lie

**Author's Note:**

> I shouldn’t have written this but I did
> 
> The summary is misleading
> 
> This is angst
> 
> But all’s we’ll that ends well and this ends well

So this is the lie: my brother went missing for a year because our grandma is a runaway experiment or something. His boyfriend went missing, with no relation, because he had minor powers. Little, nothing big. His best friend was gone because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time, and their other friend had family ties to some heroes, and so she went missing too. This is the lie I need to tell. That I need to believe, really, because my Mom and my Dad and my sisters and brothers are all just so glad that he’s back to think about what back means.

They don’t think about the scar on his face that runs from the middle of his forehead to his cheek. It’s an old thing, but not old enough that it’s gotten dark, just old enough that it isn’t painful anymore. Or the scar under his jaw. Which is almost surgical in some parts. In others, it looks like it was attacked. Or the piercing in his ear. The faded purple scar that shows under some of the tank tops he wears. Or that he only wears military fatigues from the new system that took over hero control after the battle at Provo.

But I do. Because I always think about everything. It’s how I cope. And so Lance came back when it was just me, because he was lucky that way, I guess. And it was just him, standing with his hands behind his back, nervous. And behind him was Keith Kogane. Who I recognized, inexplicably. From after whatever disaster had ripped everyone up.

“Lance?” I said, because the way he stood was different. He was taller, fitter. His face was different. I started to choke up.

“Hey.” He said. His voice had dropped, like, permanently. He was seventeen, but he looked ageless. Like he’d been alive for too much. “Who else is here?”

“No one. Family therapy.” I tried not to sound passive aggressive. “Police are coming to talk to me. Because I was at the incident in Sola.”

He didn’t look surprised in the least. Because I knew he was there too. Speculatively. I had no proof.

“Can we come in?” He asked. Like it wasn’t his house. Like he and Keith were a ‘we’. They probably were now.

“Yeah.” I said. I stepped out of the doorway, and Lance grabbed Keith’s hand and led him in. I pulled out my phone and scrolled through the notifications. Just the standard. The photo my insta was pulled open to was one of thousands, of Blue Lighting and Red Bandit’s kiss after he’d gotten hit by the car. I rolled my eyes and threw it on the kitchen counter. Keith glanced at it. His face went red.

“Hey, Maija.” He said, like he knew me. I’d met him twice. “What’s that?”

Lance looked at it. “Shit,” he said, going red himself.

“It’s not like it’s you.” I said, because I knew it was. And then he told me the lie. Although he prefaced it without ‘so this is the lie’. More like ‘so what happened is’.

So this is the truth- my brother is the most powerful common range hero in the world. He saved millions of lives. He and his boyfriend and their friends went to a rebel organization after a botched rescue attempt. They overthrew the government. That’s just what I figured out on my own.

“May I use the bathroom?” Keith asked. He was different too. A scar down his cheek, half his head shaved.

“Yeah.” I said. Then, after he was gone- “Lance, that kid’s crazy. Did you know there was a conspiracy board in his room about how GALRA was controlling every aspect of the government?”

“Was he wrong?” Lance asked, like it was a joke. “How do you even know that?”

Because I stole the board.

“I investigated.” I said.

Tell me the truth, I thought. But I wasn’t, so what did I expect, really.

“Mai, I know is is gonna be rough.” He said. Something is patronizing about how he talks, like he doesn’t think I’m ready to understand what happened. Maybe I’m not.

“It _has_ been rough! It’s never not been rough! Since you’ve been gone we haven’t had an okay day, do you get that?” I swallowed. “I texted everyone. I didn’t tell them what was going on, but Becca’s gonna take a few hours to drive back from Uni.”

“Oh,” he said. “I’m glad they’re coming.” He looked at a photo of himself taped to the fridge. He laughed, as if the boy in the photo was not him.

Keith came out of the bathroom and sat at the island in the kitchen. Lance walked around to his side and twisted his long black hair through his fingers, pulling it off his neck. It was an intimate moment, and I looked away.

Two weeks ago, Red Bandit, arguably the most romanticized hero since Black Sunlight, had grabbed my hand and pulled me out of a press conference in Sola. It was terrifying. And Keith Kogane, who was sitting at my kitchen table, was him. It tore me apart that I didn’t have any proof.

I heard the grumpy old minivan pull up in the driveway. Lance glanced up, and Keith squeezed his hand, which rested on his shoulder. They hadn’t said a word to each other since they’d come in, but there was obviously more communication between them than me.

“Mai, what’s wrong?” My mom said, coming into the mudroom and kicking off her shoes.

“Ma,” Lance said, holding his elbows. “I’m back.”

She dropped her purse, looking up at him. Tears spilled down her face.

“I’m back, Ma, I’m back,” Lance said, his voice still level. She walked towards him slowly, as if he were an apparition. She put her hands on his shoulders and hugged him. He remained stiff as a board, even as he brought his hand up to pat her back. Then dad came in.

“Lance is back.” I said. He cried too. I’d never seen my dad cry. And then Carmen and Dominic and Este, and five minutes after them, Andre barreled through the door. I sat still through the whole exchange- the where were you’s and the tears and Lance saying I’m sorry a dozen times. Keith sat, same as me, his hands on the table. No one seemed to notice him until Lance brought him up.

“This is my boyfriend,” he said, threading his fingers through Keith’s hand.

“Oh,” my mom said. “You’re ah-”

“Gay?” My dad finished.

Lance froze. I watched everyone take Keith in for what he was- what me and Dom and Estania had known for a while.

“After all that happened,” Lance took a deep breath. “After all that happened, I forgot I hadn’t come out.” He laughed hopelessly. “I haven’t thought about it. I’m bi. But-” he spoke with assurity, and the hair on the back of my neck stood up. “Me and Keith aren’t going to be apart.” He didn’t add any qualifiers. It was a statement of being.

“And if you have a problem,” Keith said, licking his lips. It was a small gesture, and on anyone else it would have been nervous, but I realized that everything he’d done since he’d come I was practically a threat. Silent and powerful, like a bouncer. “Then I assure you that Lance won’t need to stay here. ALTEA has plenty of resources.”

“Keith,” Lance said.

“No threat, no threat,” Keith said.

“I know.” Lance said. He glanced at me, then at dad again. “So that happened.”

“Son, I don’t care if you’re gay. Or what is it you said? Bi? Son, all I care about is that you’re home.” That was enough for Lance. But I didn’t forget the exchange between him and Keith.

“Me too,” he said. I made eye contact with Keith. He raised his eyebrows. He knew I knew.

Lance picked up Carmen with no effort, commenting on how tall she’d gotten. He didn’t laugh, and his voice stayed in the same level tone. And after all the tears were done, he started talking. I heard it in his voice before he started the statement. _So this is the lie._ We all sat in the living room, as he wove the lie for us, Keith sandwiched into his side. They were at once very dangerous, the kind of dangerous that you could feel by looking at a person, and scared, like the only thing keeping them from totally falling apart was each other.

“Do you remember details?” Este asked. “You can testify against Zarkon and GALRA-”

“Already sent in my statement. It’s why we got back late, after the battle.” Lance said. He touched his jaw, where there was a big scar. “It was terrifying.”

And Becca came home. Her car had been won in an academic contest when she was seventeen, and it was some fancy electrical thing. It didn’t make any noise, like the minivan, so when she came in, we had no warning.

“Mai, what’s so urgent?” She asked, when I greeted her at the door.

“Lance is home.” I said. She dropped her backpack and ran into the living room.

“Lance?” She asked. Cried.

“Beck!” He said, almost excited.

“Where have you been?” She said. After the hour and a half of explaining, I’d forgotten about how bad all the tears were. Then she broke off the hug and raised her hand to push him in the chest.

Several things happened at once.

Keith jumped off the couch, ready to interfere. Lance grabbed Becca’s arm and twisted her so that her back was to him, a leg to the small of her back arching it uncomfortably. Everyone yelled.

Then he let her go. She fell to the ground, and Keith took Lance by the shoulders.

They didn’t have to say sorry. Regret was etched into every line of Lance’s back. After a minute of silence, I followed them upstairs. The door was open, and I listened.

“What are you supposed to do?” Keith asked. “Tell them? It’s bad enough that you were a passive captive in their eyes, but the face of the rebellion? Fuck.”

“God, I’m never getting to space. I’m just gonna be expected to save the world whenever it comes up. Maybe it’s what I’m suited for.”

I turned around the railing and looked at both of them. They were entwined on Lance’s bed.

“Mai.” Lance said.

“I knew.” I said.

“She knew,” Keith agreed.

“So this is the lie,” he said. And then, “So this is the truth.”

And I didn’t want to hear it. But I listened. And Lance, for the first time that day, spoke with emotion. And I sat on the floor and didn’t touch him. Because I was scared.

“Well?” He said, after running over, briefly, the events of the year.

“Do you know there are legions of vigilante fan girls who desperately want to fuck your boyfriend?” I asked.

“What?” Lance said, startled.

“Not to mention the fan art. Fanfics? You got them. You have become actual cultural icons.”

“So no telling.” Lance said. Keith laughed out loud.

“That’s fucked.” He said. Lance lay down on his bed.

“You didn’t touch anything,” he said, looking at the ceiling, the glued on glowing stars.

“Este slept on the couch for a while, then moved into Beck’s old bed.” I was still totally upright in the middle of the floor. Lance was on Keith’s lap, practically, Keith was resting his chin on his shoulder. Every single motion they did was both entirely self conscious and entirely for each other.

“Dinner’s ready,” my mom called, the same way as she did the day after Lance had been missing, officially, for 24 hours.

“Let’s go,” Lance said.

“Am I invited?”

“If you’re not, we can just go home,” he said.

Because we weren’t home anymore.

I understood, but I wish I didn’t.

I stood up stiffly. I felt so stiff. Because I’d known, I know I’d known, but like everyone else, I’d followed vigilante fan pages, I’d looked at the theories, all of it- about a billion celebrities that Lance and Keith looked nothing like. That one music video that was a controversy from South Korea where an actor played Red bandit. And, self indulgently, I’d read the fics. I followed the art accounts (my own, claiming purple.lighting.bandit on more than one platform). And the way I’d cared was twisted.

And so I was stiff around them. And they moved in a languid fashion, and the juxtaposition would’ve been funny if the emotions in my head weren’t killing me.

No one asked why I’d been allowed into a conversation that was obviously private.

Half way through the dinner, a communicator beeped on Keith’s belt. He answered it hushed. Then he whispered to Lance, which I caught the harsh edge of.

Sister. Cammy. Here.

What? Who? Where?

Keith then addressed the table, which he hadn’t done in the whole of the time the two of them had been back.

“My sister,” he began, and the other conversations stilled. “My sister,” he began again, looking anywhere but at a face, as if he hadn’t expected to have all eyes on him. “Would like to join us.”

“She’s never had a home,” Lance said, and I knew that was the right way to make my mother soften.

“You’re all welcome here,” she said. “So long as there’s no violence at this table.

“She eats her own fingers sometimes,” Keith said.

I couldn’t tell if he was joking.

**Author's Note:**

> Yeet 
> 
> Nothing I say here is set in stone. The end of blrb is up to readers interpretation however they will. Again, this is like I was writing a fanfic of blrb? Please don’t mind me. Just cause I’m the author doesn’t mean this is how it’s supposed to be.
> 
> We gonna b about three chapters is what I’m feeling.
> 
> Luv ya


End file.
